Wisconsin cheeses dominate in World Cheese Championship Contest

Out of 82 classes, state cheesemakers earned 30 Best of Class awards (gold medals), 29 second-place awards and 35 third-place awards. Wisconsin cleaned up in nine classes, taking all three places. Out of 249 total awards, Wisconsin captured 38%.

No other state was even close in the biennial contest, which drew a record 2,504 entries (764 from Wisconsin). New York was next with nine gold medals, followed by three apiece for California and Vermont, two each for Idaho and South Dakota and one apiece for Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio and Utah.

Overall, U.S. cheesemakers dominated the competition, earning gold medals in 55 categories. Switzerland came in second among the countries, with seven golds. Canada had six, Denmark five, the Netherlands four, and Germany and Spain each took two, while Australia and Austria each captured one.

The 2012 World Champion honor went to a Vermeer from the Netherlands, a reduced-fat Gouda-style cheese. A winter kase from Switzerland and an appenzeller from Switzerland took first- and second-runner-up honors, respectively.

John Umhoefer, executive director of the WIsconsin Cheese Makers Association, said this was the first time a reduced-fat cheese has won the world competition.

"I tasted it and it was excellent," he said. "Something reduced-fat cheeses fight against is a firm body and a slight bitter, and it had neither of those things. It was really a rich-tasting cheese."

Another nice surprise, Umhoefer said, was a second-place win in the Gouda category to Gary Grossen of the Babcock Hall Dairy Plant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That category "is often swept by the Netherlands," he said.

Wisconsin always does well in this competition, but this was an exceptional year, according to Patrick Geoghegan with the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. In 2010 the state took home 21 gold medals and earned 31% of the awards.

The World Championship Cheese Contest was started in 1957 and has always been held in Wisconsin -- in Madison since 2000. It's the oldest international cheese competition and, unlike others, it is a technical competition, judged by experts who look for up to 50 different defects in a cheese and judge in tenths of a point up to 100 points. The Vermeer cheese scored 98.73 in the final round of judging.

For that final round, the 16 top gold medal winners are evaluated by all 39 judges. This year selection of the world champion was incorporated for the first time into a ticketed evening event, which sold out quickly to more than 400 people, Umhoefer said.

For detailed results of the contest, visit the World Champion Cheese Contest's website. For a video of the contest, click here.